Creating an MTR Report for Network Diagnostics
An MTR (My Traceroute) report is a powerful tool that combines the functionality of ping and traceroute to diagnose network issues like packet loss and high latency. Our support team may request an MTR report from you to investigate connection problems.
A number of factors contribute to the speed of your connection. An MTR report helps us identify exactly where in the connection path a problem might be occurring.
1. How to Create an MTR Report
First, you need to install the MTR tool if you don't have it already.
For Linux
For Windows
A popular graphical version of MTR for Windows is called WinMTR. You can download it from its official source.
2. How to Understand an MTR Report
The MTR output shows each "hop" between you and the destination. The most important columns are Host, Loss%, and the latency columns (Avg, Wrst).
Why Bidirectional Reports are Crucial
The path your data takes from your computer to our server is often completely different from the path it takes from our server back to you. This is called asymmetric routing. A problem might only exist on the return path. Without reports in both directions, we cannot get a complete and accurate view of the connection.
Interpreting the Results
When analyzing your report, here are the key rules for interpreting the data correctly.
A real network problem usually exists only if you see significant packet loss that persists or increases over several subsequent hops, including the final destination.
Look for a sudden jump in the Avg latency that persists until the destination, or a Wrst value that is much higher than the average, indicating lag spikes.
Examples: Good vs. Bad MTR Reports
In this example, we see 50% packet loss at hop 3. However, the loss does not continue to subsequent hops. The final destination (hop 5) has 0% loss.
| Host | Loss% | Snt | Last | Avg | Best | Wrst |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. your-router.local | 0.0% | 1000 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 0.9 | 5.5 |
| 2. your-isp.net | 0.0% | 1000 | 5.3 | 5.5 | 4.1 | 15.2 |
| 3. some-backbone.net | 50.0% | 1000 | 10.5 | 10.2 | 9.8 | 20.1 |
| 4. another-peer.net | 0.0% | 1000 | 10.8 | 10.5 | 10.1 | 22.0 |
| 5. server4you.com | 0.0% | 1000 | 11.2 | 11.0 | 10.5 | 25.0 |
Conclusion: This is not a problem. The loss at hop 3 is due to that specific router de-prioritizing ping requests. The network is healthy.
3. Submitting the Report to Support
When providing the report to our support team, please ensure you include the following:
- The MTR report from your client to our server.
- The MTR report from our server to your client.
- If possible, an MTR report between two of your Server4You servers.
- The date and time when you created the reports.